


The Hypothetical Lower Bounds of the Glass

by virmillion



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 03:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17821370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virmillion/pseuds/virmillion
Summary: Logan has multiple ways of working through frustrating emotions, on the rare occasion that they do arise. One such method is taking a long drive to an unplanned destination.





	The Hypothetical Lower Bounds of the Glass

    Logan has never understood it when he read stories that included people muffling their sobs. It never made sense to him. Who would make noise while crying? If anything, it’s just sitting silently as a couple drops of water roll down your cheeks. Certainly nothing to warrant drawing attention to himself. At the absolute most, he might take a few seconds longer to finish the minesweeper game on his phone, since the film of tears can make seeing the screen rather difficult.

    With years of experience under his belt, Logan has found many ways to deal with unwanted emotions that don’t include crying it out or seeking comfort in the arms of another human. Too messy, too uncertain, too many possible missteps that he doesn’t care to deal with.

    One such way is driving. Not driving fast, and not to any particular destination, but just driving. Fresh out of college and living within biking distance of his starter job, Logan’s car is almost invariably fueled up at any given moment. Like now, for example.

    On first glance, you might mistake Logan for a bookish professor, or maybe a teacher’s assistant. Press him a little further, and you might get to hear the annoyed rumbles lulling behind his voice, talking a smooth rhythm straight into your chest as he parses out each of his words with the utmost attention, forcing the conversation to a close as soon as possible while allowing you to walk away with as much information as you desire. All of this would probably not culminate in you expecting him to be a cashier at a department store. Such is the life of someone drowning in student loans.

    Logan removes his glasses as he hits the punch clock, slipping them into his shirt pocket and savoring the blinding blur of his not-quite-perfect vision. To his locker and grabbing his coat, stashing his nametag and tossing the rest of his register’s trash, Logan does his damnedest to compartmentalize his frustrations of the day. A handful of paper in the recycling bin is the soccer mom who couldn’t be bothered to move her own bags the ten inches from the counter to her cart. His keys into his pocket are the pack of angry toddlers whose parents pretended not to notice when they started smacking his leg. The patter of his feet on linoleum switching to smacks against concrete is his shift overlapper showing up thirty minutes late with a cold cup of coffee as an apology. The car door slamming behind him is the snapping shield that seals him off from the rest of the world, customer service and rational decisions be damned.

    The rumble of the engine starting is nothing short of pure, unfettered relief.

As for the tears slowly making their way toward the corners of his lips, well, we're just going to exercise some basic human decency and pretend we don't see them. Lord knows that's what Logan’s doing.

Pulling onto the main road, Logan lets the back of his head thump against the soft cushion behind him, wishing it were possible to drive with his eyes closed. Honestly, he never used to have such an issue with these emotional outbursts when he was younger. If anyone told preteen Logan that he’d be fighting back tears for absolutely no reason—well, actually, nothing would come of it. His head would be too deep in a book to notice. Regardless, if the words managed to beat through his thick skull, he’d probably ignore them. Just like he’s ignoring the thoughts pacing through his head now.

Logan allows the emptiness of the night around him to fill the silence behind his eyes, hardly noticing when the garish street lights switch to scattered lamp posts with barely a flicker to show their life. Past the last traffic stop that he recognizes, Logan drives on. Concrete gives way to dirt and mud, and still he drives, more focused on the smog-drowned stars overhead than any actual destination along the road. Beyond the furthest reaches of even the most stubborn lamps, in those subtle stretches of darkness where not even the bravest of lightning bugs dare linger, that is where Logan finds his solace.

He pulls off to the side of the road, cutting the engine and exhaling softly. The moon shining proudly overhead illuminates the fog of Logan’s breath, but he can’t find it in himself to care about how cold it’s gotten. Anyway, if he doesn’t open the door, he’ll probably be fine.

He opens the door.

The night wind hits him like a smack to the face, only slightly lessened by the pitiful shield provided by his car. Propping his shoulder against the cool metal, Logan pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, poking and prodding as he absorbs the absolute nothingness around him. Empty sky, empty stars, empty road, empty car. He briefly considers the fruitlessness of it all, but pushes the thought to the side when he sees a pair of headlights in the distance.

The speed with which they’re approaching is none too reassuring.

Logan swivels around to flatten himself against the trunk, watching the silver box rip through the air faster than he can blink, faster than he can feel the tears drying on his face. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the wheels weren’t even touching the road. Maybe they’re not.

As the soft yellow tail lights fade into the horizon of the universe, it crosses Logan’s mind that he hasn’t any other plans tonight. He slips back into the car and claps his hands twice, forcing warmth back into his palms. And he drives.

A cloud of dust kicks up in his rearview mirror, his car little more than a silhouette against a world of stars. The corner of his mouth lifts ever so slightly as he pushes the gas pedal harder, harder, a feeble whisper against a night of silent emptiness. Still faster he goes, leaving a streak of pale red in his wake, chasing down the vague memory of the silver car that couldn’t manage to spare him a second glance.

Glancing at his silent radio, Logan toys with the thought of filling up the space, top forties or obscure alternative rock or something, but he can’t seem to peel his fingers from the steering wheel. Maybe rolling down the windows—yes, rolling, his car really is that old—but no, his hands won’t cooperate for that, either. So on he drives. The complete lack of sound buffering the roar of his engine beats blunt nails into his skin.

Once the faint glow of that racing car appears on the crest of the horizon, he eases his foot up, exhaling in time with the shrinking cloud of smoke. The lights ahead flash once, twice, and go out.

“Where are you going?” Logan murmurs, pressing his foot against the brakes. Maybe he’ll regret it later, but he flicks off his headlights, blinking tightly as his eyes adjust to the moon’s cold glow. Mercifully, a faint silhouette of the car stands out between the distant stars, curving off the side of the road.

Logan swings to the right when he reaches the same spot, finding a dirt path that he very well would’ve missed if not for his unwitting guide. Lined with just as many bramble bushes and dust clouds as the rest of the road, the street—a generous name, to be certain—blends right in with the rest of the empty stretch of road Logan finds himself wandering every so often. The stars overhead blink down at him. Logan blinks back.

Count for count, beat for beat, Logan eases off the gas in time with the car ahead, both silent against the night sky. One car careful, one car lost. Logan isn’t quite certain which is which.

When the low hum of electricity replaces the dull hammer of his heartbeat in his ears, Logan allows himself to wonder where, exactly, this person is unintentionally leading him. Maybe it’s not a person at all, but a robotic car set on figuring out why Logan would bother with such frivolities as reading or taking ambling trips.

Logan’s latest read was Bradbury’s _The Pedestrian,_ if you couldn’t tell.

He flicks his eyes up to the rearview mirror, double checking that there’s no cars barreling for his tail lights before he cuts the engine. All clear. Up and down his scale of doubles he counts, waiting out the seconds until he feels confident enough that the driver ahead of him has reached their destination. One, two, four, eight, up and up to thirty-two and seven sixty-eight, then back down to sixteen and three eighty-four, eighty-one ninety-two, down and down to four, two, one, one half, one quarter, one eighth, up and down and up and down his scale of numbers until even the distant electricity has sunk to a hollow presence in his chest.

One eighth, one quarter, one half, one.

He guns the engine.

It doesn’t take long to see the silver car again, now looking strange in its stillness. Parked across three lines in front of a squat little building, it wouldn’t be hard to convince Logan that it was abandoned there years ago. He backs neatly into a space tucked against an alcove in the walls and counts his doubles one more time before exhaling, parking the car, and pulling on the door handle.

He revels in the feel of loose dirt underfoot, so much more textured than plain concrete under a car tire. Even if the roads have the courtesy to spice it up with potholes, Logan has always found a certain fascination with the naturalness of untouched ground. Well, untouched until now. Perhaps not the most interesting of observations, but it keeps him happy. Mostly.

The chime of the bell over the door is something completely alien to Logan, not quite bright, not quite loud, not quite real. Just like the insignia engraved into the fogged window in the vague shape of an eye. Logan traces his gaze along the groove as he glances back at the night beyond, watching the stars disappear in the reflection of his face. He almost misses it completely when the door closes, trading the pale moon for a dull lamp hanging behind him.

“Have a seat anywhere?” Logan murmurs to himself, reading the chalkboard standee covered in scrawling greens and pinks. Almost like chicken scratch, if chicken scratch were any more illegible. “Wow, sure hope I can find an open spot.”

Shocking though it may be, the diner is empty. This must be an astounding turn of events for you, given that you just personally saw Logan follow someone else all the way here, an undoubtedly dull journey culminating in an empty car outside an eye-guarded building.

Okay, so maybe not completely empty. Logan sniffs once out of habit, pressing the bridge of his glasses up with a knuckle and surveying the options. A bar of cracked granite surrounded by barstools with worn maroon leather. Swinging double doors with that same eye insignia under a bright green ‘enter’ sign. Where the entrance leads, Logan doesn’t really care to find out.

Matching maroon booths with similarly ruined surfaces ring the walls, pressed up snugly to the fogged windows. Floating sporadically in the space between are tables for two, tables for for, and oddly enough, a table for thirteen, all with intricately backed seats. Not a single spot in the entire room is without a cracked piece of leather.

Logan’s eyes catch on a glass of what looks to be water resting near the edge of one of the booths, filled to the brim with ice cubes and a straw. He sniffs and adjusts his glasses again, heading for one of two-chaired tables in the center. Far enough past the water that its owner will have to notice him walking by, but close enough that his glasses don’t have enough time to slide all the way down once he reaches the seat.

Hooking his feet around the front two legs, Logan props his cheek on one fist, blinking down at the table. Covered in ads for pet services and home improvement numbers and all other manner of local hirings, he’s not entirely certain any of the requests are within driving distance of this place. There’s a rattling sound to his right, but when he turns to look, only an empty booth greets him. When he turns back, there’s a glass of water resting at his left elbow. The straw inside is a bendy one, but the shorter side is scraping against the bottom of the cup. Logan turns to catch whoever delivered it, but the swinging double doors don’t even shudder.

Facing back to his table, a menu has appeared.

He adjusts his glasses slower this time.

“If you try to catch them in the act, you’ll only ever catch your death,” a gravelly voice says. Actually, pretending like a voice said that is a bit generous. Logan isn’t convinced it was anything more than a particularly loud thought in his hollow head.

He glances to the right, but the person at the booth is motionless, their head bent toward the table and their bangs obscuring their face. Based on the way the tips of their hair have the faintest blue glow, they’re probably looking at their phone in their lap, but Logan wouldn’t bet even a dollar on that. He turns back to his water.

Tracing his eyes down the menu, Logan considers the eclectic list of options. Five star seafood listed alongside plain pancakes, both underscored by a picture of what might be raw steak. Maybe a really ugly tomato. The grilled cheese is probably the safest bet. Safe being a relative term, but still.

“If you get the grilled cheese, don’t eat the triangle.”

A quick look at the person behind him reveals nothing, and certainly no hint that they’d said anything, but Logan is pretty sure their bangs were parted to the right before, not the left. A sniff. A glasses adjustment.

He faces forward again, prepared to resign himself to an odd night of no waiter with an inexplicable bill for water he didn’t request, but even that seems to be out of the question. Where his menu had sat mere moments before, there’s now a plate with an obscenely burnt grilled cheese. Nothing out of the ordinary, all things considered. Well, the short end of his straw is now bone dry and sticking out over the top of the glass, but besides that.

Logan peels up the top slice of bread, squinting at the cheese suspiciously. Right there, smack in the middle of a pile of yellow—completely melted, mind you, but somehow cold to the touch—is a single dorito. Technically a triangle. He peels it off and sets it to the side of the plate, replacing the bread slice. In the space where the dorito was is the faint outline of an eye. A quarter of his water is gone.

“Put the triangle under the plate.”

He turns to see the person in the booth, but there’s no one there. Even the water is gone, not a single ring stain left to prove they were ever there in the first place. It crosses Logan’s mind that there’s nothing stopping him from getting up and leaving. He stays seated.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” Logan turns back for what’ll hopefully be the last time, somehow not surprised to see the person sitting across from him now. Their arm stretches forward to pry the plate off the table, using their other hand to slip the dorito underneath. The porcelain doesn’t so much as clink when they set it back down.

“What color is my car?” they ask. For once, Logan finally manages to see their mouth move in time with the words. Even so, their voice still sounds like a faint whisper in his head.

“Silver,” Logan’s mouth supplies. He isn’t quite sure he believes himself, but if his mouth said it, it must be partially true. The rims are probably silver, at least.

They study him for a moment too long, and Logan is pretty sure he isn’t imagining it when dark circles appear under their eyes. Those definitely weren’t there before. Probably. Maybe.

They nod slowly, taking a careful inhale through the nose and cocking their head to the side. “You’re Logan.” It’s not a question.

“I’m here for a reason.” It is a question, but he doesn’t phrase it as one.

“Not necessarily.” They snake an arm out for Logan’s glass of water, not bothering to ask permission before taking a long sip from the straw. As they drink, the cup refills itself. “Name’s Virgil.” Logan inclines his chin, as if this is a perfectly acceptable answer to his non-question. “Probably a guy.”

“Probably.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why?”

“Why aren’t I here?”

Logan opens his mouth, closes it, and blinks. A bite vanishes from the sandwich. “I don’t know.”

Virgil sighs, puffing his cheeks out to blow into the straw. With every bubble that bursts in the glass, the meniscus lowers. “No one ever does.”

“Is anyone supposed to?”

“You don’t.”

“Neither do you.” While he’d like to say this conversation is going nowhere, Logan isn’t even sure that much is true. At least it would have a destination if it were going nowhere. He adjusts his glasses.

Logan blinks, and the glasses are on Virgil’s face. Virgil adjusts them with his knuckle, gnawing at the corner of his lip. “Why did you follow me here?”

Finally, a question Logan knows the answer to. “I was bored, and you looked like you knew where you were going. Well, your car did.”

“My silver car, you mean?”

“Is there a different one?”

“Is there?”

Logan’s glasses reappear on the table in front of him. He doesn’t put them on.

“I come here every thirteenth day, and no one ever follows me. What makes you so special?”

“Nothing, I guess. I was just bored.”

“You were just bored. So you followed a speeding stranger down an abandoned dirt road, going so far as to turn off your headlights to make sure I actually led you to my destination.”

“Pretty much.” Logan laughs uncomfortably, hoping to shrug it off as another bite of his sandwich vanishes. The first missing piece reappears. Virgil’s expression remains completely neutral. “So, uh, what brings you out here?”

“Obligation.”

“To what?”

“Moral imperative.”

Logan is finding it increasingly difficult not to be annoyed by this Virgil person.

“Okay, well I came out here because I was having a bad day at work, and I needed to blow off steam. Tearing down an empty road seemed like a nice shortcut. What’s your excuse?”

“Commitment.”

Logan steeples his fingers together under his chin, inhaling deeply and praying that his twitching eye isn’t terribly obvious. “Why isn’t anyone else here?”

“Where?”

“The diner. That we’re in. Right now.”

“What diner? This is a karaoke bar.”

Logan would honestly not be surprised in the slightest if a single blink transformed the entire diner into a karaoke bar, but no, the only thing that changes is Virgil’s expression. He offers a half smile. “Just kidding. Messing with you. I like to come here to think, since no one else really frequents this place. Stays pretty empty most of the time, and the owner is some old recluse with enough money stocked that they don’t need constant patronage. The thirteenth day thing is true, though. Don’t ask about day twelve.”

“Why don’t—”

“Don’t. Ask. About. Day twelve. Just don’t do it.”

“Don’t do it, won’t do it. Got it. Any other fascinating pieces of advice to offer?”

Virgil takes a long pull from the glass, watching the water spill over the sides. “Yeah. Don’t drink the water.” The grilled cheese is gone. “Oh, hey, check this out.” Logan looks on as Virgil lifts the place, crushing the dorito with his fist.

“What was the point of that?”

“Boredom, duh. My only motivation.”

“I thought your motivation was obligation.”

“An obligation to keep vaguely interested in my responsibilities.”

“I might punch you right now.”

“Hit with a wouldn’t guy glasses you, though.”

“What.”

“Those.” Virgil points to Logan’s eyes, in front of which are his glasses that he definitely never put on himself. “You wouldn’t hit someone wearing them.”

“You aren’t wearing them.”

“I never said I was wearing them. I said you, wearing them, would not hit someone.”

“You are quite possibly the most insufferable companion I have ever had the displeasure of talking to.”

“Thank you.” Virgil folds his hands together on the table, grabbing the cup of water and flipping it upside down on the table. “I’ll foot your tab. It’s not a cheap thing to keep refilling these cups, you know.” Sticking his tongue out, Virgil reveals an ice cube resting just between his teeth. He bites down and shatters it, sending frozen shards flying through the air.

“What was your obligation, though?”

“I already told you that. Moral imperative. Try to keep up.”

Before Logan can question it, or even demand an explanation for one of the countless nonsenses he’d had to endure so far, Virgil is scraping his chair back and heading for the bar. The stranger tosses a fistful of something along the countertop and glides out the door, the chime of the bell silent in his wake. Logan doesn’t even have to look to know the silver car is gone, quiet as the night and just as dark.

He drags his feet over to the bar, knocking a fist against the side of his skull and trying to rattle out some semblance of reason. An impossible feat, to be sure. Glancing at the counter, he wonders whether he’d be a fool to assume Virgil left actual coins and bills for his uneaten sandwich.

A fool, indeed. All that decorates the countertop is the crumbs of the demolished dorito.

Logan strides out to his car, not pretending to be surprised at the absence of Virgil’s vehicle. His head hurts.

As he turns the key and shifts into drive, Logan gets it into his head that the diner behind him is imaginary. He presses his forehead to the steering wheel, one foot firmly holding down the brake pedal as he counts his doubles scale, up and down, down and up, up and up and down. Logan holds his breath, straightening up to slump against the seat and thud his head into the backing. He carefully avoids glancing in the rearview mirror.

Pulling out of the parking lot, Logan does everything in his power not to look back, focusing only on where he’s going and hoping to whatever holds sway over his fate that he’ll find his way back home. One thing’s for sure—there’ll be no swift silver car to guide him this time.

By the time he’s far enough for the diner to be crawling toward the horizon behind him, Logan is more than content with his ability not to look back. Of course, this pride is his own damnation.

His eyes drift to the rearview mirror.

No diner.

Did he expect any different?

Well, no, but he _is_ driving pretty fast. Maybe it’s already far enough to be out of sight. At least, that’s the explanation Logan contents himself with.

Just between you and me, though? Let’s not mention to Logan that his speedometer hasn’t passed twenty miles an hour since he left the parking lot. We'll wait and see if he works it out on his own.

**Author's Note:**

> i promise exactly zero things in regard to when the next parts will come out because this part sat untouched for a month before i wrote three thousand words in one night so  
> maybe check out my [tumblr](https://virmillion.tumblr.com/post/182863006096/the-hypothetical-lower-bounds-of-the-glass-part) if that sounds like a party time?


End file.
